MYOG / DIY GEAR: Technical Terms


When shopping for gear or creating your own, here are some technical words you may come across:

  • DWR
  • Ripstop
  • Denier
  • gsm or oz/yd2
  • MIL-SPEC

Let’s talk about some of these common words and what they mean, so you can understand exactly what you are purchasing, or what you are creating. 

DWR– Durable Water Repellant

This is a coating applied to fabrics that gives the material a hydrophobic property. When water touches the material it will bead up and roll off rather than saturating the material.

Typically this is something applied on top of the fabric. It usually doesn’t change the feel of the fabric, but may depending on which product was used. Note that this is typically not a high rating of waterproofness. This means that a heavy load of water may penetrate the DWR coating and can soak the fabric, and beads of water that are sitting on the surface for extended periods of time can also eventually seep through. After wear and use, a DWR coat may need to be reapplied. 

You may be familiar with 3M’s product scotchguard. This is a DWR coating.

DWR is useful for things such as condensation, light rain, splashes and spills. It is not going to give you full protection in a heavy rain.

Denier

This is a term to describe the weight of the individual fibers that make up the weave of the fabric. Technically speaking, it is the weight in grams of 9000 meters of that fabric. So if a fabric says that it is 210 deniers, then if you were to take a spool of the yarn that makes the fabric, measure out 9000meters then weigh it, it would weigh 210 grams. 

The weight tends to correlate with the thickness of the individual fibers that make up the fabric, however it does not necessarily note the tightness of the weave. Therefore, it is not always corrolated with the fabric weight. 

You will usually see this annotated as the measurement followed by a ‘D’, so for example: 210D.

Ripstop

Ripstop means that the fabric has been woven in a specific way so that if a rip was to appear, it would not easily continue. There is a thicker fiber that intercepts the rip from spreading. Depending on the size and force of the tear, it would usually stop at a grid point. 

This is commonly used in outdoor gear and can usually be visually identified by a square or diamond pattern on the fabric. A higher denier fiber is woven among a lower denier fiber, the thicker one making up the grid pattern you see. 

The higher denier fibers and the tight weave of ripstop can usually prevent a small tear from spreading.

gsm or oz/yd2

gsm is grams per square meter, while oz/yd2 is ounces per square yard.

This is a measurement to tell you the weight of your fabric. If you were to cut one square meter of your fabric and weigh it in grams, this would be your gsm. If you took a square yard of your fabric and weighed it in ounces, this would be your yard/oz2. One is metric units, one is imperial. They can be converted with a little math if you are used to thinking in one unit system over the other.

MIL-SPEC

This stands for Military Specifications. This means that the product or component was made according to the US Department of Defense standards for that specific product or component. In order to be called Mil Spec, a product must meet certain pass tests of certain elements such as strength, and friction testing. Things that are labeled Mil Spec are known to be of good quality as the US Military is using products of these standards in their gear.  


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